Man charged as getaway driver in double murder says he was only buying smokes

Leslie Greenwood, the man charged with being the getaway driver in a double murder carried out in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce five years ago, says he had no idea he was transporting two men hundreds of kilometres to carry out the cold-blooded slayings.

Leslie Greenwood, the man charged with being the getaway driver in a double murder carried out in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce five years ago, says he had no idea he was transporting two men hundreds of kilometres to carry out the cold-blooded slayings.

The 46-year-old took the stand in his own defence on Tuesday and told the jury hearing his case he had no knowledge the two brothers he drove from Nova Scotia to Montreal were going to kill Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi on Jan. 24, 2010. The Crown’s theory is that the person who issued the order to at least kill Murray was Jeffrey Albert Lynds, a Hells Angel based in Nova Scotia, and that Greenwood was assigned by Lynds to be the driver in the hit.

As defence lawyer Paul Skolnik told the jury before Greenwood testified: “Now you’re going to hear a different version (from the Crown’s)” of what happened when the murders were carried out.

Greenwood said he was a childhood friend of Lynds and that they grew up near Truro, N.S. and rode the same school bus together for years.

“I’m a hillbilly,” Greenwood said with a shrug early in his testimony. He also referred to Lynds and himself as “country folk.”

He said that even though he bought drugs from Lynds when both were in high school, their relationship later changed to a more professional one as adults. Greenwood said he owned a car body shop and was a distributor of Jeep parts for all areas in Canada east of Quebec. Lynds would sometimes bring cars to him to fix. But Greenwood later conceded he also took part in some of Lynds’ illegal activities. He said the Hells Angel sometimes offered him to be partners in products that were obviously stolen — like hundreds of kilograms of rock salt or a side of beef — that they could turn around and sell for profit.

Greenwood told the jury that on Jan. 23, 2010, he already had plans to travel to Kahnawake to purchase 65 cases of cigarettes from the reserve and then quickly resell 50 of those cases while in Montreal to a man named Charlie Finley for a $20,000 profit. He said that before he left, Lynds asked him if he could give Robert and Timothy Simpson a lift to Montreal and that the Hells Angels didn’t explain why.

“He asked me if I had no problem dropping two guys off,” Greenwood said. “I drove. They slept (in his car).”

He said that when they arrived in Montreal at around 8:30 a.m., he and the Simpson brothers parted ways, at the St. Jacques Hotel in N.D.G. He said he checked into the low-budget hotel — close to where Onesi and Murray were later killed — for a nap and a shower and did not expect to see the Simpson brothers again. After his nap, Greenwood said, he went to the reserve, shopped around for the best deal he could and purchased 65 cases of Mohawk cigarettes for $7,500. He said he returned to Montreal hours later and made arrangements to have a late afternoon supper with Finley, at 4 p.m., at Goldie’s a bar near the St. Jacques Hotel.

Greenwood testified that, after having sold the cigarettes to Finley, he was about to drive away from the bar’s parking lot when the Simpson brothers appeared out of nowhere, roughly eight hours after they had parted ways, and ordered him to let them in his car. He said that Robert Simpson in particular issued the orders to drive away and held a gun toward him while he did so.

When Skolnik asked where Finley might be today (to potentially corroborate his story), Greenwood could only reply: “Out west.” He said he tried to call Finley recently but couldn’t reach him. When he was cross-examined by prosecutor Richard Audet later on Greenwood clarified that Finley was from Nova Scotia but worked in “the petroleum industry out west” and worked in remote camps for weeks.

The Simpson brothers both became collaborating witnesses and testified for the Crown after pleading guilty to both murders. Both said that Greenwood was fully aware he was driving them to Montreal to at least murder Murray and that the plan all along was for Greenwood to drive them back. Both brothers said Greenwood also offered up an alternative plan to kill Murray before he and his driver, Onesi, were shot in the parking lot of a McDonald’s located near Goldie’s in 2010.

The brothers said Greenwood discussed the hit at the hotel and proposed that they kill Murray in the motel room, chop up his body before placing it in the car Lynds had supplied and then set the hotel room on fire to destroy evidence. They also testified that Greenwood waited in the getaway car in the parking lot of a home-renovation store across the street from the McDonald’s and not at Goldie’s, which was a couple of hundred metres away from the McDonald’s.

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